[3830] RTTY Roundup AC0C Single Op HP

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                    ARRL RTTY Roundup

Call: AC0C
Operator(s): AC0C
Station: AC0C

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Kansas
Operating Time (hrs): 23

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:  208
   40:   83
   20:  565
   15:   24
   10:    0
------------
Total:  880  State/Prov = 56  Countries = 46  Total Score = 89,658

Club: Kansas City DX Club

Comments:

Posted results passed the ARRL submission bot.  

The contest was great fun.  The first 9 hours were uneventful with good Q
rates, especially in the first few hours.  

Then, while running on 40m about 0300 Sunday, the bad luck came in waves.  

My MFJ988 auto-tuner started hissing and crackling - traced this to a series of
poor solder joints on the inductor traces.  After getting the tuner fixed, about
5 minutes later, the amp glitched and did so hard - blew both the main amp
circuit breakers, the anode line fuse, and exploded the glitch resistor.  It
checked out otherwise and so I replaced/reset everything and it fired up fine. 
  

But strangely, the tuner seemed unable to find a match - the antenna is
resonant on the CW portion so it made no sense.  Some further checks indicated
a fried 30m trap pushing the resonant frequency too far out of range --> net
result was no more operation on 40m.  I suspect the trap death was the catalyst
for the amp glitch - and given the solder joint conditions, it was in the
walking-wounded category from day 1.  And with a -18C temp, the trap problem
was definately not going to get fixed.  Fortunately, following the hasty
repairs on the tuner and amp, the hardware ran perfectly for the rest of the
contest.

Ran 80m the rest of that evening.  The unanticipated downtime for hardware
repair meant only 3 hours of sleep.  Next morning, I discovered I must have ate
something bad the day before - fortunately there is a bathroom just off the
shack operating position - so the first 4-5 hours of Sunday AM were hampered by
nausia and bathroom breaks.  20m started to open up about 7:00 AM with loads of
DX coming in.  Ran 20m most of the day but Q count (either run or SP) dropped
badly in the afternoon.  By then 40m was open but I was out of action there. 
Had to settle for extended runs on 20m and 80m but I beleive if I had 40m
functional, I could have added an extra 100-200 Q.  Lot of JA and a ZL came in
right at the end of the contest providing a nice end to an otherwise
challanging 2 days. 

Despite the hardware and body problems, it was a great way to kick off the new
year.

73/jeff/ac0c


Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/